


a second chance

by distractionpie



Series: Sweethearts AU [5]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Post-High School, Reconciliation, School Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 07:12:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13806126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: Joe doesn't understand the point of a high school reunion. Dwelling on the past like that is just sad. It's not like high school was a good time for him. But he's agreed to go anyway, and maybe revisiting some old wounds is just what's needed to heal them.





	a second chance

Joe really doesn’t see the point of a ten year high school reunion. There are days when he still feels like he’s only just escaped that place, why would he want to go back?

The invite has a load of crap written on it about reuniting and catching up with old friends, but Joe’s stayed in touch with everybody he was good friends with and doesn’t really care to rekindle his antagonism with those he’d only ever had contact with  because it was unavoidable.

Unfortunately, whoever is organising the reunion had the bright idea of putting an advert out in the local paper and Joe’s mom had seen it. She thinks the idea of a high school reunion is sweet and has come to the bizarre conclusion that he’d be ruining it for everybody else if he didn’t go, because obviously the cheerleaders and the football team are just waiting for their chance to make up for missing out on being his friend the first time. The fact that Joe had never wanted anything to do with them was besides the point, depriving them of his company would apparently be unkind. There were days when the only thing that had kept him from dropping out of school was his mother and how much it had mattered to her back them, and he supposes if he’d survived the year and a half it had taken to impeach Trump, he could survive six hours of a high school reunion to make her happy. And who knows, maybe it would be better now that it was a temporary thing not four years of prison, and now that he’s mostly found outlets for all that directionless teenage rage that had made things like caring too much about a particular sports team, eating pineapple on pizza, and repeating memes in actual conversation seem like capital offences and not just minor annoyances.

Once he’s committed it’s not as hard as he’d feared to talk his old friends into accepting their own invites. Malarkey had already mentioned in their groupchat that it could be hilarious to go along and take the stuffy gathering the sort of snobs who feel the need to go back and flaunt their accomplishments to people they should have moved on from a decade ago and turn it into something fun, and once Joe backs the idea suddenly everyone is talking like it’s prom all over again - who’s going to sneak in the liquor, how outrageous can they get away with dressing and still be allowed in the door, who might be hooking up after. Joe’s got good pals and if anybody can turn the horror that is a high school reunion into something fun, it’s them.

So they buy their tickets, as ridiculous as it seems to be paying money to let high school bullshit reinfect their lives, and plan to meet up a few hours before to get in enough pre-drinking to make being back there bearable and soon enough the night comes around.

Their group arrives at the school in three different taxis, Joe worked for the city cab company for long enough that they still give him a discount, and while they probably aren’t too drunk to drive yet there’s no need to take that risk and anyway they will be by the end of the night and taking cabs now saves them having to go back tomorrow to fetch abandoned cars.

Joe rides with Chuck and Malarkey and they get there first, mostly because Joe can’t resist the urge to keep leaning forward in his seat and giving the rookie driver directions despite the fact that every time he does so Chuck hits him across the back of the head and Malarkey reminds him he hasn’t been a cabbie in years.

Whatever. He still knows best. As proven by the fact the other two cars are nowhere to be seen when they pull up.

Malarkey suggests waiting for the others, but it’s fucking cold in the parking lot, especially after the heaters had been running full blast in the car, so it doesn’t take much for Joe and Chuck to talk him around to heading in and letting the others come find them.

As soon as they enter a woman swoops down on them. Joe recognises her vaguely - Trisha, Tonya, Tara, something like that. She’s blonde, perky, and as alien to Joe now as she was back them.

“HI--!” she cries, eyes scanning all of them in the obvious hope of seeing at least one person she remembers the name of, “--GUYS! So glad to have you here.” The blank lack of recognition is almost funny.

“We’re glad to be here,” Malarkey says, and Joe’s impressed by how sincere he sounds.

“Tasha!” a shrill voice squeals, and their greeter looks over her shoulder and grins.

“Well, you can grab your nametags from the table, and I’m sure you guys still remember the way to the gym,” she chirps, and doesn’t wait for an answer before she darts across the foyer to give an even more enthusiastic greeting to the newcomer.

It had been like that when they’d been students too. The student council, prom committee, yearbook types always bouncing around with a thin veneer of friendliness offered for appearances sake while not actually giving a shit. Back then it had been annoying and while he hadn’t thought about it for years it turns out that it’s still grating now. But whatever. Joe isn’t actually here to see if people he never really knew to begin with remembered him. He hadn’t thought he remembered the way to his high school gym, but now he’s in the building it’s like old muscle memory has just been waiting all these years for him to be back, feet automatically finding the way through fluorescently lit corridors, Chuck and Malarkey trailing after him.

Joe hasn’t got any taller since senior year, but it all feels so much smaller now as he steps through the double doors that had once meant suffering and probably still did, although at least this time Coach Sobel wouldn’t be blowing his whistle right in anybody’s ear and screaming at them to hustle.

He looks around and it’s a high school gymnasium. They might have dimmed the lights and added a few drapes to cover up the sports equipment but a basketball hoop with a sheet over it doesn’t look like anything other than a basketball hoop with a sheet over it and no amount of air freshener can totally cover the lingering stench of cheap body sprays and adolescent body odor that is all the more noticeable for the fact it’s no longer a stink he’s surrounded by every day.

The crowd are milling around in suits and dresses, a weird echo of school dances and there’s a table covered in snacks and punch bowls and if this party were full of Joe’s sort of people those bowls would have been spiked three times already but given the formality of the present crowd they’re probably just juice. They won’t be for long though.

There are tables and chairs arranged around the edges of the room and Joe makes an executive decision and suggests that Chuck and Malarkey go claim a table or two for the group when the rest of them arrive while Joe checks out the food.

He knows it’s going to be substandard, cheap and low quality, but he still rolls his eyes when he reaches the tables and sees what’s on offer. Quiche with bacon bits, chipolata sausages on cocktail sticks, pastries that didn’t come with a label saying what the fillings are. He’d call it disappointing but that would imply he had any positive expectations in the first place.

Still he paces around the table. There is no way he’s doing the kind of drinking he’d need to get through the night on an empty stomach and while his high school memories meant it was no great surprise that kosher foods had probably never crossed the organisers’ minds, there has to be enough vegetarians coming to this thing that there ought to be a few plates of stuff that he’s good to eat.

It turns out that anything with vegetables is tucked away right at the back, which seems idiotic to him, but not any more idiotic than the rest of this stupid event. He glances around then shrugs and grabs a whole veggie platter and one of the mixed ones to take back to the table they’d staked out in the corner. Nobody seems like they’ll miss them too badly.

“You know what’s sad,” he observes as he returns to his seat, “The amount of people I’ve seen in just the last five minutes who are here with the same damn people they went to prom with. Imagine having progressed so little.”

“Hey, I think it’s sweet,” Malarkey says, but he’s not fooling anyone. “I mean, better than the ones who are avoiding each other in a way that practically screams ‘divorce’.”

Joe’s seat is turned away from the bulk of the room, but at that he spins it, curious. “Who?”

Malarkey points out two members of the crowd who Joe doesn’t recognise but, yeah he can see it, they’re putting a ridiculous amount of effort into visibly ignoring each other and Joe bets it’s going to descend into an entertaining show of “I’m having more fun than you,” “No, I am!” before the night it out. Chuck pulls out his phone, opening up Facebook to provide supplementary gossip as they people watch.

Joe doesn’t really care about these people he left behind so long ago, had never been curious before tonight about how Jenny who sat next to him in algebra 2 turned out, but it’s kind of entertaining to see the results. (In Jenny’s case a decent haircut, no more braces, and a husband in an expensive looking suit who clearly dotes on her. She let Joe borrow her notes every time he had to miss class for dentists’ appointments and shit, so go Jenny!)

Just then, Joe sees the others come in. He waves to catch their attention but it’s pretty clear they don’t notice so Malarkey gets up to bring them over.

Joe stares idly around the room, his gaze stopping inexplicably on a figure standing near the DJ booth, back to the room and head bowed in a way that suggests he’s looking at something on his phone. Whoever he is, he’s about average height with shoulders that fill out his shirt nicely, thick dark hair and an ass Joe could stare at all day. The tailoring on those pants is flawless. Joe doesn’t recognise him, but he couldn’t recognise his whole graduating class by their backs of their heads (or their asses) even when they were in high school never mind after ten years of them growing up and him working hard to leave those years behind him, but he hopes that the mystery man will stay occupied at the front of the room and continue to class up the scenery.

It’s not Joe’s lucky night though, because the guy turns almost as soon as Joe has finished wishing he wouldn’t. Joe takes him in piece by piece --a stubbled jaw, high cheekbones, rosy lips settled in a bored pout-- then he puts the pieces together. “Holy shit, he got hot.”

Chuck turns, immediately curious. “Who?” Joe points and Chuck’s eyebrows shoot up so high they almost vanish into his hair. “Is that David Webster?”

“Yeah...” Joe says, then winces at how dazed he sounds. But, “Damn, he looks...” Joe tries for a moment to think of an adjective other than fuckable, but then shrugs and comes out with it. “Don’t you think?”

“Eh, not that much,” Chuck says and Joe waves him off. He and Chuck have always had different types and that’s always worked out just fine --it means they’re never in competition-- but it also means that having conversations with him about hot guys is a fruitless endeavour.

“Shit, I gotta talk to him,” Joe says, reaching up to fix his hair and then cringing at how being back here has apparently sent him right back to being a teenager. “Do you think he’s single? I mean, he looks like _that,_ but he’s standing on his own...”

“Uh, Lieb?” Chuck says, tone faintly concerned. “He’s crazy and he hates you, remember? Because he’s crazy.”

“Crazy hot,” Joe says, although Chuck has a point. Maybe it just being back here that’s making him feel so impulsive and so interested in somebody he hasn’t seen in a decade, but maybe it’s just because it’s Webster and Webster was impossible to be indifferent to.

Joe’s mom had wanted him to expand his social circle at high school and Joe knew what that really meant was that she was desperate for him to find some non-troublemaking friends who might restrain his adventurous spirit. When he’d pretty much literally stumbled across the new kid, David Webster, wearing a sweater that had been so obviously picked out for him for his mom, he’d had seemed the perfect place to start. Webster had quickly shown himself to be the kind of smart that dragged everybody around him up just from listening to him talk, polite and nerdy in a way that Joe had known his mom would have adored, but in their shared classes David had shown just enough humour that Joe had been pretty sure they could have been friends already if only he’d been able to find David during lunch period to invite him to sit with them. That he’d had such a cute smile hadn’t been the source of Joe’s interest but it was certainly something Joe had been planning on thinking more about after he’d got Webster hanging out with them.

And then it had all gone wrong.

Joe had never figured out what Webster’s deal was, if he was an asshole and hiding it for those first few weeks for some reason or just plain crazy as some other people had theorized, but out of the blue he’d stopped smiling at Joe and started avoiding him. That, Joe might have put down to shyness or being intimidated by Joe’s friends (they were a rowdy bunch after all), except for how suddenly David was scowling every time he saw Joe instead, and then he progressed to raising his hand in history class just for the sake of pointing out every weakness he could find in Joe’s own answers and smirking at Joe whenever the teacher accepted his correction. It hadn’t taken long for Joe to lose patience and start giving Webster attitude right back.

From there, things had escalated.

The lowest point had been junior year, when Joe’s homeroom teacher had threatened to call his mother if she received more reports of him bullying David, because apparently several teachers had raised concerns. Those teachers vastly underestimated David who --while not inclined towards pushing and loud name calling-- had a spiteful streak of his own, his methods were harder to prove but there was nobody else who seemed like they might sign Joe up for a million spam emails and calls, and Joe didn’t for a minute believe it was clumsiness that had caused Webster to knock his water bottle all over Joe’s social studies project that one time.

Not that Joe didn’t give as good at he got. It had quickly stopped mattering what the fuck had started it and just been about taking every opportunity for spite.

Of course, when he’d been sixteen and the most action he’d ever got was a bit of above the clothes groping during seven-minutes-in-heaven, the way Webster would glare at him and lean dangerously close to whisper snide comments had been more than enough fodder for a regular teenage jerk-off fantasy of pushing him down and wiping that smug look off his face or Webster expressing his frustration with Joe in a more physical manner, even if Webster was an asshole. And apparently age had only made him more attractive.

“And he hates you,” Chuck repeats. “Can we not forget that rather crucial fact.”

“Hat _ed_ me,” Joe corrects. He doesn’t know why that started, but after ten years it can’t be so important that Joe isn’t able to convince him otherwise in the next six hours. This night is starting to look fun.

“Do you really see this ending well?”

Joe shrugs. “If it does, I get a good time; and so what if it doesn’t? At the end of the night I go back home and he goes back to wherever he ended up and we never see each other again unless I somehow get coerced into going to another of these stupid things.”

“I dunno,” Chuck says. “I feel like you’re overlooking the option where he punches you in the face.”

Joe rolls his eyes. They’d shared four years of fever pitch teenage loathing and Webster had never once taken a swing at him, Joe didn’t think he’d suddenly cross that line tonight. “Webster ain’t a fighter,” he says, and Chuck sighs but he knows Joe is right.

“Does this mean you’re ditching us for Webster?” he says. “Because, Webster? Really? I thought the plan was to have a good time tonight.”

“I hang out with your fuckers every damn week,” Joe points out. “Or nearabouts. This is like, a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t make it good though,” Chuck grumbles, but he’s known Joe too long to really argue.

“I’m gonna go say hi,” Joe announces. “Tell the others where I’ve gone, okay?”

“Oh, I’ll tell ‘em alright,” Chuck says. It won’t take much explaining. All their friends know about Joe’s unfortunate weakness for pretty and stuck-up. Those flirtations pretty much always end badly, but the point is that they’re fun while they last.

Joe grabs one of the vegetable pastries from the tray, pops it into his mouth, then very firmly disregards the urge to check his hair and walks over to Webster and taps him on the shoulder. “Hey.”

Webster turns and the first thing Joe notices that that Webster is wearing thick framed glasses --hipster glasses-- and doesn’t have that weird squint anymore. Probably connected. Joe had never really noticed how blue his eyes were before but now they’re open wide with surprise and hard to ignore as Webster looks him up and down, then frowns.

“Liebgott?” he says, sounding disbelieving, and Joe grins.

“Hey Web,” he greets. “Been a while, huh?”

“You’re not wearing your nametag,” Webster says, and that immediate nitpicking is so typical of how Joe remembers him, but then Webster grimaces and says, “Sorry. Stupid of me. And it’s not like you need it,” which is totally unexpected.

Of course, his nametag is clearly printed with _Dr. David Webster_ so he clearly hasn’t entirely misplaced his old pretentiousness, especially since Joe bets the doctorate is in something ridiculously impractical like poetry or underwater basket weaving. Webster never struck him as having the stomach for practising medicine.

“Yeah, I figured anybody who needs a label to recognise me isn’t anybody I’m all the interested in catching up with,” Joe says. He’d come with most of his friends and hadn’t really planned on speaking with anybody else.

“True, I can’t imagine many people forgetting you,” Webster says, a hint of bitterness in his tone.

Joe’s pretty sure most people in the room have forgotten him, but then Webster had been one of the few people from high school _he_ couldn’t erase from his mind despite the fact Webster was standing alone when Joe saw him, clearly not as significant to everybody else, so maybe it’s the same for him.

“Guess it helps that I stayed in the area,” he says instead. “I still see a lot of these people around.” Never Webster, but then, Webster had come from an expensive neighbourhood on the other side of town so even if he had stayed in town their paths would probably never have crossed.

Webster nods. “What are you doing now?” he says. “I...uh...if you don’t mind me asking that is...”

Why would he mind Webster asking? Joe’s best guess is that Webster is worried that he might be embarrassed to admit what he’s done and fuck that, Joe has been nothing but successful. “I did a few community college courses on cutting hair, got a job at... you remember that place on Lafayette Street, the place with the sign that says it was established in 1827 and was run by a guy who looked like he’d been there since the start? Yeah, well he trained me up good and I worked nights driving cabs as well, so when the old guy finally retired I bought the place off him. Opened up a second location across town last year.”

“Wow,” Webster says. “That must be pretty steady.”

Joe narrows his eyes. _Steady?_ It might not be as fancy or as glamorous as ditching town to go be an academic, but he’s proud of what he’s build. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, it definitely means you’ve got a lot more prospects than an unemployed Harvard literature grad,” Webster says wryly, “Less debt too,” and Joe laughs, mostly out of surprise.

“You can’t be doing that badly,” he points out. Not in a suit like that, there’s no label that Joe can see but the only way it could fit him as well as it does is if he forked out for custom tailoring, and: “If you’ve got a doctorate that means you’ve focused on something pretty specialised, right?”

“Oh, uh... contemporary conflict writing. For my thesis I examined the development of war in literature over the last century and the cultural shifts,” Webster says, ducking his head a little bashfully. “I won’t bore you with the details. My brother already pointed out to me I don’t have to redo my full thesis defence every time somebody asks about it.”

Joe raises his eyebrows. That seems, well, not exactly practical, but a lot more socially relevant than 16th century theatre or classical haiku or any other the other things Joe imagined when he heard the term literature. “I guess there’s... stuff you can do with that,” he says. He can’t actually think of anything, but it’s not like he knows a lot of career academics.

“One hopes,” Webster says dryly. “But talking too much about it just makes me need a drink and somehow I don’t think fruit punch is going to satisfy.”

“You’re actually planning on drinking the punch?”

Webster raises his eyebrows, a look of politely feigned confusion hiding scorn. “Well, I’m not planning on being thirsty all night.”

Oh. Oh, no. He cannot be that naive. Joe shakes his head, pulling his jacket open enough that the flask tucked inside becomes visible and Webster’s eyes widen.

“Is that... allowed?”

He is. Joe snorts. “We aren’t eighteen anymore Web, what can anybody do about it?”

Webster bit his lip, glancing around the room like he was expecting somebody to come over and bust Joe for contraband. “I suppose.”

Joe rolls his eyes. “C’mon, surely at some point in all your college education somebody introduced you to illicit drinking?”

“Grad students mostly go to parties wearing jackets with big pockets and stock up from the buffets. I’ve gotten really good at hiding entire bottles of wine up my sleeves but I have to admit I never snuck alcohol _in_ to anywhere.”

“You were stealing appetisers from parties?” Bullshit. Webster might have gone to a public high school but he’d been at a fancy private place before that and Joe knew the neighbourhood his parents lived in - they were loaded. “Your parents cut you off or something?”

Webster looks taken aback. “Of course not, but they weren’t going to give me unlimited money either. They paid for my undergrad and even after that they wouldn’t have let me starve if it had come to it, but they had John and Ann to pay for too and staying for post-graduate studies was my choice and my responsibility.” He says it like getting an ivy league undergraduate degree wasn’t a choice, but then maybe in Webster’s world that was true. “Anyway, I mostly went to those things for the drinks.”

“Oh, well if you’re used to fancy party wine then you probably don’t want any of this,” Joe says. The flask is filled with cheap rum, pretty toxic stuff on it’s own, but he figures a slug or two in a cup of punch should help keep the reunion bearable.

Webster looks over at the clock and Joe follows his gaze. Just past 7pm, five hours till the party ends. “If I’m going to stay,” he admits. “I think I’ll need all the help I can get.”

Joe laughs. “Punch first,” he instructs. Swigging from a flask is a surefire way to get fucked up way too early and Joe’s plans to finally get some sort of resolution to all the ways Webster had made him feel back in high school hinges on Web not getting so wasted he’s throwing up in the hallways.

He walks over to the drinks table and Webster follows along. There were a few people near the table and one of them waves as they approach. Lanky, blonde and Joe doesn’t remember his name at all, but he was definitely on the baseball team. Ed, maybe? Whatever, there was definitely an Ed and an Eddie on the baseball team his senior year which made the odds on that more favourable than anything else he could guess and meant that if this guy wasn’t Ed or Eddie then Joe could at least claim he’s simply confused him with somebody else rather than just forgetting him. Guy should have worn his nametag.

But he wants to talk. “Hey, Liebgott, how you doin’?”

“Pretty good,” Joe says. “Work hard, play hard and all that. Still up on Lafayette street if you ever need a haircut.”

“Cool, I’ll keep you in mind,” Ed laughs. “And... uh, Webster, you good?”

“I’ve just finished my doctorate at Harvard,” Webster says, leaving Ed looking slightly taken aback.

“Good for you man,” he says, although the tone isn’t exactly congratulatory.

“How about you?” Joe cuts in, before Ed’s forced attempt at friendliness gets too awkward.

“Working for my old man,” Ed says with a shrug. “It is what it is, y’know? Anyway, my girlfriend is here and I left her with Ashley A. and Ashley B. so I’d best go find her again before she gets talked into changing her name and absorbed into bring one of them.”

As Ed walks away, Joe turns to Webster. “Holy shit, can you literally not help bringing up Harvard, or something? You know it just makes you sound like a snob.”

As soon as he says it he realises that calling Web out probably isn’t the best recipe for a civil conversation, but instead of getting angry Webster flushes. He might be a tool, but damn if that’s not a good look on him. “I... sorry, it’s just habit. I worked so hard to get there and I--”

“No, no, I get it, kinda,” Joe admits. “It’s your way of saying ‘fuck you’ to all the people who thought being smart was something to give you shit about.” He’s guessing, but Webster’s expression is like a banner telling him he’s right. “Most of them still think nerds are losers though, and they don’t give shit about Harvard, you get that right?”

“I give a shit,” Webster responds, and there’s a note of confidence that he never had in high school.

“Okay,” Joe says, pouring a scoopful of punch into one of the shitty plastic cups --and god, ten years on and they apparently still couldn’t be trusted with actual glassware-- and handing it over to Webster.

He pours a generous measure of rum into both the cups, can feel the burn as he takes a sip and yeah that’s gonna make this night so much easier. Joe keeps things casual as Webster asks after his friends (he hadn’t even known Webster knew who his friends were) and they’re just reminiscing about old teachers when somebody --not Tasha the greeter but with the same sort of false cheer and insincere friendliness-- jumps up on stage and starts talked about ‘sharing and remembering’ and Joe dreads to think what sort of crap most of the people he would have to share and remember about their high school days.

“--So, we’re gonna turn the music down and anybody who wants to can come up here and talk to everybody!” she announces, as if that wasn’t a dreadful idea. “Who’s up first?”

Beside Joe, Webster looks equally perturbed. “Who would...” he mutters.

“Really, you don’t want to give a speech to all our assembled ex-classmates?” Joe teases. It’s not really a surprise though, given that he’d found Webster lurking on the sidelines like he didn’t want to speak to anybody at all.

“I hated speaking in class,” Webster reminds him. “Why would I want to speak in front of everybody now?”

Joe raises his eyebrows. “Yet you always used to correct or argue with everything I said.”

“I... well, I did hate...” Webster stammers. “I mean, public speaking was never good for me but...”

“But you hated me more,” Joe finishes. Webster grimaces but doesn’t deny it.

He’s not sure what to make of having his suspicions finally confirmed after all these years. It would be easier to understand Webster just being an asshole in general, but Joe had always felt that he was being targeted. Of course, there were a whole bunch of reasons that Joe might get singled out from his peers for harassment and he’d run into a lot of them over the years from a lot of assholes. Back when things had started going badly, he’d thoroughly considered bigotry for Webster’s motive but even with Joe’s general unwillingness to give the benefit of the doubt when it came to that sort of thing, the evidence had never added up quite right in Webster’s case. No, Webster’s dislike had been personal, Joe is sure of that.

He downs his cup of spiked punch and wonders if he really wants to go through with this. It would be fun, to sneak into the locker room and live out a few of those ridiculous teenage fantasies; vindicating, to show Web exactly what he’d been missing out on by turning his nose up at Joe all those years ago; but it’s been ten years and the man standing in front of him isn’t the boy he knew back then, insofar as he’d known Webster at all.

“I’m gonna go get a refill, you want another one?”

***

A few hours later, having coaxed Web into talking a bit more about his thesis and even got a confession that he had been to a few cool parties at college although he wasn’t willing to share any entertaining anecdotes, there’s something Joe feels the pressing need to ask.

“Alright, I don’t get it,” he cuts in, ending Webster’s explanation of how he’d signed up for one gen-ed marine life class, and then a few more because it was interesting, until he accidentally amassed enough credits that his bachelor's was actually the unusual double major combination of Literature and Marine Biology. “You seem like you really don’t want to be here, so why are you?”

David sighs. “My sister. She’s been having a rough time of things at college and she wants to drop out but everything she described just sounded like normal senior stress and she’ll be graduating soon enough. I encouraged her to stick with it, said it was only a few months and after all the work she’s put it it would be a shame to throw everything away now for the sake of a few months, and she said that I didn’t even want to spend a few hours at a reunion so what did I know about sticking things out. So... I’m making a point.”

“Doesn’t seem like much of a fair deal for her, a few more months of college just for one night of a reunion,” Joe observes. “I mean, hanging out with old friends for a few hours is hardly work.” Although... Joe’s friends have been tipped off to his new goal for the night and are keeping themselves entertained across the room, but nobody has interrupted them to speak to Webster either, even though Joe is pretty sure he remembers Webster having some real friends as well as all his newspaper buddies back when they were in school. “Who were you looking to see here,” he adds, “Janovec was a pal of yours right? I thought I saw on Facebook he was coming.”

“He was,” Webster says. “But he crashed his car last week, so...”

“Shit, is he alright?”

Webster waves the concern away. “He’s fine. It’s been icy lately, he spun out, hit a tree, but he wasn’t going fast. I was in the back so I was fine, he got smacked in the face by his airbag hard enough to break his nose. The only reason he couldn’t come is because he didn’t want all the girls he crushed on in high school to see him with two black eyes and splint on his face.”

“Huh, that seems like a good excuse to want to skip the reunion,” Joe says. “You should have used that.”

Webster’s answering laugh is weak but it’s there. “That would mean telling my sister. And the amount of drama me being anywhere near a car accident would cause with my family... not a decent trade.”

“Urgh, sisters,” Joe agrees. “If I had my way mine wouldn’t even know where I live.” Not strictly true, but fuck if it wasn’t tempting sometimes.

Webster shakes his head. “Annie is alright, but I don’t want to burden her with my problems. Not least because she can’t keep a secret to save her life and she’d run right to mom if I said anything that worried her even the tiniest bit. Or possibly just fly right out to fuss over me herself.”

“I thought it was big brothers who were supposed to be overprotective of their baby siblings, not the other way around?” Joe asks.

Webster looks at him inquisitively. “All of your sisters are older, right?”

Joe nods.

“And you’d kick the ass of anybody who messed with them I bet?”

“Of course.” They might be overbearing, meddling nuisances but they were _his_ nuisances.

Webster nods. “There you have it,” he says, and Joe supposes he can see what Webster means. Age had never stopped him feeling protective, and he’d eat his own tongue before insinuating his sisters needed extra protecting because they were girls, not least because of what they’d do to him if it ever got back to them he’d said something like that.

They talk about family for a while, wander out into the parking lot for a smoke and an escape for the attempts at kareoke that have started up in the main hall, and Webster is startling easy to talk to. Maybe that’s why Joe slips up. That or the rum.

“How come you never liked me in high school?” he blurts out. There had been plenty of people who hadn’t, who thought Joe was too scruffy, too sarcastic, too political, but when they’d first met he’d thought he’d found a friend and even after Webster had decided he wanted nothing to do with Joe they’d still shared enough common ground that they’d never been able to avoid each other. Joe’s dislike had grown as a response to Webster’s own obvious disdain but he’d never understood what had set Webster against him.

Webster takes a long drag on his cigarette. “It’s... embarrassing,” he admits, “And it was a long time ago.”

Embarrassing, huh? “C’mon,” Joe presses. “It was a decade ago, surely we’ve all come far enough that all that cringey teenage shit is behind us?”

“You...” Webster scoffs then drains his drink, not exactly a good omen. “You probably don’t even remember.”

Remember? Joe hadn’t even known the cause at the time. “I did something?”

“You laughed at me,” Webster says, and Joe wracks his brains but he can’t for the life of him figure out what Webster is referring to. There was plenty of mockery after things had soured between them, but nothing that explains that initial turn. “Though... you probably didn’t know it was me.”

“How could I have laughed at you without even knowing?” He doesn’t think Webster is drunk but he’s not making any sense.

Webster turns, stares at Joe in a way that’s distinctly discomfiting, like he’s weighing Joe up before he decides if he’ll tell him the rest. It’s a look too serious for alcohol soaked reunion discussions of adolescent enmity.

Joe leans forward, pokes at the furrow between Webster’s brows to force the serious look from his face. “Weeeeeebbb,” he encourages, and whoops, maybe _he’_ s had a little more of the spiked punch than he’d realised. “Don’t be a wuss.”

Webster sighs. “Alright. The truth. I had... jeez, this is embarrassing... I had a hideous crush on you at the start of freshman year.”

Joe almost chokes on his drink at the confession. “What?” he sputters, and then, “Wait, are you saying all the times you were a dick to me were, just, whaddya call it, pigtail pulling?”

“No, not that. The anger came later. It’s... I wrote you... urgh... I wrote you a letter,” Webster says, cringing. “You read it out in front of your friends, laughed at it...”

Joe doesn’t even remember getting a letter like that, but Webster looks too humiliated by the confession, like even now nearly fifteen years on from the incident the memory still pains him, for Joe to think it’s anything but the truth. “I guess the letter had something to do with your crush?”

“I don’t recall what exactly I wrote, but yeah,” Webster admits. “And, well, I was fourteen and I thought writing anonymous love letters was a good idea so what it said probably _was_ stupid, but at the time...”

Joe tries to imagine it. He’s not the love letters sort, but even now if he admitted to feelings for somebody and they laughed at him he’d be annoyed. At fourteen, when every zit felt like the end of the world, to be mocked by a crush, deliberately or not, would have been pretty devastating. “Yeah, well, I noticed you being upset with me,” he says, “Even if I didn’t know why.”

“I guess that part was hard to miss,” Webster says. “I was such a brat.”

“Yeah, you kind of were,” Joe agrees. If he hadn’t been the target Webster’s petty spite might have been amusing but high school had been difficult and Webster’s loathing hadn’t made it any easier.

“Sorry about that,” Webster says, leaning his head back against the wall, eyes shut. “You didn’t deserve it.”

Joe shrugs. “Whatever, teenagers are stupid,” he says. Getting an apology is nice but he’d stopped nursing that grudge a long time ago.

Still, he can’t help but imagine it. Freshman Webster, practically still a baby looking back, but decently attractive by Joe’s standards at the time (even then the good bone structure had been evident beneath the puppy fat and he always smelled good when Joe sat next to him in class which was more than could have been said for a worrying percentage of their peers) even if he had been so cripplingly shy that he could barely string a coherent sentence together if more than three people were looking at him at the same time.

What might they have been if Joe hadn’t laughed at that note? Well, they certainly wouldn't be talking like this now. Joe was never the type to shack up with a high school sweetheart and he didn’t think Webster was either, not when he’d put so much effort into getting out of town and making something of himself. And there was little doubt theirs would have been a messy breakup.

Not that it matters. Joe wouldn’t be Joe if he weren’t the sort of person to laugh at sappy nonsense like teenage love letters. He couldn’t change the past but he could decide how he wanted to move forward.

He’d had a plan for how he wanted this night to end, but hitting on Webster feels a bit weird with all this new context. Webster certainly isn’t still nursing the crush after all that hatred and all this time but after poking at the old wound, Joe making a move would almost certainly be taken as mockery. Honestly, after all they’ve said to each other, Joe was kind of going cold on the ;get Webster into bed and then forget all about him' plan anyway. “Where do you live now?” Joe asks, and maybe it sounds like changing the subject but what else can he say.

Webster grimaces again. “I... I’m staying back with my parents,” he says, with a frankly excessive air of shame. Joe had stayed in his family home for a few years after graduation until he got some savings in the bank and a proper foundation to move out and start his own life and he’d never understood the people who acted like having a supportive family was some sort of failure.

“Good,” Joe says. “Thursday night is quiz night at the Currahee and my team never places higher than third or fourth because we suck at the literature questions and whole chunks of history. You really want to apologise for being an awkward douchebag of a teenager? Come help us win it. I want that free pizza.”

“I don’t think your friends like me,” Webster pointed out. “How about I just buy you a pizza?”

Joe shakes his head. “I wouldn’t taste like victory,” he says. “And don’t worry about them, they didn’t really know you then and they’ll get to know you now.” It’ll probably take some effort to persuade them, but Joe thinks they will be convinced. After all, Webster never actually did anything to them, their dislike was all about solidarity with Joe, and so if Joe tells them Webster is cool now then they’ll probably roll with that too.

“And what type of pizza tastes like victory?”

“Olive and mushroom,” Joe said. Technically the winning team could pick their preferred toppings, but his team had agreed on their toppings months ago when they’d been more optimistic about winning and that wouldn’t change for Webster.

“Huh,” Webster says. “Normally I like pineapple, but okay.”

Pineapple? Fuck. Maybe the friendship Joe had thought they could have had as teenagers was doomed from the start. He wouldn’t have put up with that at sixteen, never mind all their fighting and the fact that their lives were leading them on different paths, but now... well maybe there are more important things.

"It starts at eight, so you've gotta be there by seven forty-five," Joe orders. "And if you bail on me, I will find you. No excuses."

There's something a little teenage about the way that Webster ducks his head when he smiles, but the focused look in his eye is all new and Joe hopes Web will stick around long enough this time for him to learn what it means.

**Author's Note:**

> my original concept for this had a much stronger shipping focus and them actually going through with the "Look what you missed out on" hook-up, but when i started writing it they decided to go and be all emotionally mature about things (these two!) so instead it became about growing up and letting go, plus maybe the future possibility now they are more mature the have a greater chance of forming a relationship that works because the lingering issue with high school au romances is always the fact the honestly, how many couples forming then would really stay together in the long run?
> 
> If the first fic for these to is more than a little reflective of my memories of how it felt to be in school, this is more influenced by the perspective shift of looking back. Not quite the story I'd planned on telling, which is why it took a while longer than anticipated, but on reflection I think it works.


End file.
